


Asking for a Friend

by sylviarachel



Category: You Could Make a Life Series - Taylor Fitzpatrick
Genre: Ash & Grace: Reluctant WAGs, Chaz Rossi is A Good, F/M, Female Friendship, I don't think this passes the Bechdel Test sorry, M/M, Men's hockey culture sucks, Tipsy ranting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23317780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylviarachel/pseuds/sylviarachel
Summary: She knows who she is, and she knows Chaz has an appropriate level of respect for her career goals and shit, and she’s pretty sure she can find something in common with some of these women if she tries. There’s got to be some who are just cosplaying the glamorous blond thing in order to fit in, right?Still, Raf Sanchez’s girlfriend is a relief.
Relationships: Ashley Guerin & Bryce Marcus, Ashley Guerin & Grace Dawes, Bryce Marcus/Jared Matheson, Chaz Rossi/Ashley Guerin, Grace Dawes/Raf Sanchez
Comments: 16
Kudos: 49





	Asking for a Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Internal monologues ahoy!!
> 
> I'm not super happy with this tbh, but I have been futzing with it for a while and have decided to Just Post The Dang Thing Already.
> 
> Parts of this will make more sense if you first read [Down But Not Out](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22666027), but it's not critical. In terms of timeline, this slots in around Down But Not Out (mostly before, a little bit after) and also [Working Theory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23042854) (whose timeline keeps going a little bit after this one). If that makes any sense. 
> 
> CW for mentions of a nasty hockey injury, offscreen homophobia, a bit of internalized misogyny, Woody Allen (literally just his name) and a fair amount of beer-drinking.

Look, Ashley knows she should have expected this when she started dating a junior hockey player, okay? In her defence, though, Chaz is a great guy—he’s kind, he’s chill, he’s loyal, he works hard, he’s good in bed, and he’s a lot smarter than he usually lets people see—as well as being, frankly, pretty hot, so the temptation was significant. And she didn’t know much of anything about hockey back then, so she didn’t realize right away that when he talked about playing in the NHL, someday, it was like …  _ actually a legit career plan.  _ Nor did she know about the weird creepy thing where like 80% of NHL players have skinny, busty wives or girlfriends with long blond hair. Or the much creepier thing where it seems like the non-blond or non-skinny ones get blonder and blonder, and/or skinnier and skinnier.

Ashley really, really did not sign up to participate in that shit.

But.

Ashley also knows a good relationship when she sees one, and she is not interested in throwing away the years they’ve put in of working together, getting out of high school and past stupid fights about roadies, dealing with long-distance, negotiating household division of labour, getting into each other’s interests and hobbies and getting to know each other’s friends, just because so many (SO MANY) of Chaz’s co-workers have terrifyingly similar-looking women on their arms at parties and family skate. It’s creepy, sure, but in the grand scheme of things? Not even close to a deal-breaker.

She knows who she is, and she knows Chaz has an appropriate level of respect for her career goals and shit, and she’s pretty sure she can find something in common with some of these women if she tries. There’s got to be some who are just cosplaying the glamorous blond thing in order to fit in, right?

Still, Raf Sanchez’s girlfriend is a relief. 

Grace Dawes is a couple years younger than Ashley, a tall, quiet girl with dark-almost-black hair, freckles, and big blue eyes with lashes so dark and thick they look like she’s wearing mascara, but she isn’t. She played hockey in high school, it turns out, and still plays in U of C’s co-ed intramural league. She’s really, really smart—which is not to say Raf isn’t—and like him, she’s quiet and kind of shy and very sweet.

Except while playing video games, that is, when she turns into a quietly and viciously determined take-no-prisoners shark-person. Unlike the boys, who celebrate with loud hoots and roughhousing when they win, Grace just sits there looking silently triumphant.

It’s honestly terrifying, and—look, Ashley’s pretty straight and extremely monogamous, okay, but she’s not  _ oblivious _ —kind of hot. 

*

“Hockey boys are so  _ dumb _ ,” Grace laments. She and Ash are three beers in, watching the Flames and the Caps play each other in DC and demolishing an extra-large Canadian from the good pizza place down the street.

Ashley contemplates the sweaty Flames defenceman currently being interviewed on her and Chaz’s TV screen. She’s not sure what question he was just asked, and his answer isn’t helping her figure it out: “Well, you know, we gotta make more chances, uh, get pucks to the net …”

Grace rolls her eyes.

“One time I saw Raf get interviewed at second intermission,” she says, “and like, Raf’s a smart guy, right? Like, you’d agree that Raf can carry on a normal conversation like a regular person?”

“I mean, yeah,” Ash says. “He doesn’t talk that much, but he’s definitely a smart dude.”

“Right,” says Grace. She takes a swig of Warthog. “So he gets a hattie, and he gets pulled for an interview, and he’s like,  _ Yeah, uh, thanks, it was a team effort, just getting those pucks to the net _ …”

She does like, this standard-issue-Canadian-hockey-bro voice? And Ash laughs so hard she practically chokes on the last of her Toolshed Red Rage.

“Oh my  _ god _ ,” Ash says, when she’s got her breath back. “Do they like, teach them that shit in Timbits Hockey? Chaz does the same fuckin’ thing. I mean, not that Chaz is getting hatties all over the place like Raf and Bryce.”

“Chaz is a good player,” Grace says. She knows what Ashley didn’t say. “And like … he’s what they call a great room guy? Everybody likes him, Ash, and I don’t wanna be all  _ you haven’t played so you don’t get it _ , but that is  _ super _ unusual. That’s like … actually really amazing.”

Ash smiles, because yeah. “He is pretty great,” she agrees. “I mean. He’s just such a good guy, you know? He’s  _ nice _ . He like … listens and stuff.”

Yeah, okay, she’s pretty tipsy.

“Aww,” says Grace, grinning.

“Raf’s a good guy, too,” Ash says. “I mean, except for the part where he lives in fucking … where does he actually live?”

“Arlington, Virginia.” Grace makes a face. “I mean, it’s a cool place to live! And you can get right downtown on the Metro and go to all those awesome free museums. It’s just, you know.” She shrugs. “Four thousand kilometres away.”

Ashley absolutely  _ does not _ think it’s adorable that Grace and Raf spend their DC visits wandering around free museums.

“Yeah,” she says. “Long-distance  _ sucks _ .”

They do a sloppy high-five from opposite ends of the couch. Grace finishes her Warthog, takes the empty bottle into the kitchen, and comes back with two more.

The third period starts. A big Caps defenceman gets in Bryce’s face, and Bryce takes a dumb penalty.

“Raf says that guy’s a dick,” Grace says. “Dineen, I mean. Like, Raf’s friends with David Chapman, and Chapman’s friends with Lombardi—that little dude there—” she points to the other d-man currently on the ice, who, yeah, in comparison to Dineen is … not very big. “And Lombardi and Dineen have some kind of long-standing beef, apparently.”

The Flames are … not doing a great job of killing that penalty, ouch.

“Although,” Grace says. “I, um, I probably shouldn’t repeat this? But.”

She pauses.

“Don’t let me stop you,” says Ash.

Grace waits out the rest of the penalty; Chapman scores on Dobrogosz, with an assist from Raf, and she does a pretty restrained little fist-pump. Out of consideration for the dejected set of Chaz’s shoulders, Ash supposes, and she appreciates it. Like, sports are objectively dumb? But this is Chaz’s job, and Chaz cares, and so Ash cares too.

… yeah, the fourth beer is maybe where her vocabulary starts to deteriorate.

“So, this is probably bullshit?” Grace finally says, a couple minutes into five-on-five. “But like … Raf was right about Bryce and Jared, so what the fuck do I know?”

Ash waits. 

“Raf says … Raf says he thinks maybe Dineen and Lombardi used to be … you know. A Thing.”

“ _ Whoa _ .” Ash sits up fast—too fast, whoops. She waits a second for the room to stop spinning. “Like, a  _ thing _ thing? Holy shit.”

She leans forward, squinting at the TV. It’s a big TV, but the players are still really small. Dineen and Lombardi are on the bench now … aggressively  _ not _ looking at each other. Although like, that could definitely be her imagination.

“It’s just a Raf theory,” Grace adds. “He’s probably imagining things.”

Raf has never struck Ashley as a particularly imaginative guy, but she doesn’t say that out loud, because it sounds kind of insulting, even though she doesn’t actually mean it that way.

But she’s had a  _ number _ of beers, so she does say, “Do you ever wonder if like …  _ any _ of these guys are actually straight?”

Grace looks like she’s actually considering this.

“I mean,” she says, eventually. “Raf is? Or at least, he says he is.”

“Chaz says he is, too,” Ash admits. “And like. I’m not saying either of them is  _ lying _ . They’re good guys. But like.”

“Yeah,” Grace agrees.

“I mean, it would be hard, you know? The whole sport is so fucking … it’s like a whole-ass cesspool of toxic masculinity.”

“It fucking  _ is _ .” Grace leans over to clink her bottle of Warthog against Ash’s. “The fucking stories Raf’s told me, Jesus. And like, this dude my older sister dated? Hooking up on every single roadie the whole time.”

“ _ Ugh _ ,” Ash says. “So gross. Yeah, Chaz has told me some stories, too. Although,” she adds, consideringly, “some of those stories were about Bryce, from like … before Jared told him Bryce was his boyfriend? So I feel like that kind of reinforces my theory.”

“Heh,” says Grace, this little half-chuckle. “I mean, they do spend a lot of time hanging around naked.”

“Uh huh.”

“They hug a lot. They smack each other on the butt a lot.”

“Yup.”

“... but also, a lot of them are disgusting homophobic fuckbois.” 

Ash sighs. “Fair point.”

On the TV screen, Chaz gets a shot on goal but Crane makes a spectacular glove save. Ashley makes a disappointed  _ fuuuuuck _ sound, and Grace says, “Oh, man.”

*

Ashley’s never done the whole fantasy hockey thing, but Grace sends her an invite to a league she’s the commissioner of, and it’s actually really fun? Like, her team is objectively terrible, because she doesn’t actually know that much about hockey and she drafted tenth in a league of 12 so she lost out on Bryce Marcus and Julius Halla and Raf Sanchez (so she stacked her draft list with guys she knows, sue her), but she’s got Chaz and Jared, and Ben Morris and Liam Fitzgerald and Patrick Drake, and various guys that Chaz played with at some point in the past and said aren’t dicks, and she’s enjoying the little extra thrill of like, getting a point every time one of them does.

It’s still weird that she knows these guys who are  _ literally famous _ . And not “knows them” as in “they sometimes come to the restaurant where I’m a server” or “they live in my neighbourhood and I see them out running sometimes and enjoy ogling their asses,” but as in “they frequently hang out in my living room playing on my boyfriend’s Xbox” and “I actually know the secret of who Bryce Marcus married this summer, and was literally at the wedding.”

And like … it’s frustrating, sometimes. Maybe this is always what it’s like, to be a regular-ass person who’s friends with famous people? Ashley has no idea, because her only reference point is Grace, whose experience is pretty much exactly like hers. Maybe whenever you know the real person behind a media persona, you end up wishing you could tell everyone the truth, whether because they’re like … fucking Woody Allen or something, or because the gossip and speculation about them is ridiculous and unfair and you’d really like to be able to say,  _ Look, this is a real human being with real human feelings you’re hurting here, and you should stop. _

On the one hand, it is objectively ridiculous and laughable that people would think Bryce is married to her. Like, Ash loves that Chaz isn’t offended, isn’t stupidly jealous or whatever? But she’s frankly pretty offended on his behalf, because look, they’ve been all over each other’s social media for  _ literally years _ , she sucks it up and goes to Flames family stuff with him even when she would really rather not, she is  _ very clearly Chaz Rossi’s girlfriend _ , and it’s absurd how people are just ignoring all the evidence just because, what, Bryce is more famous? 

But on the other hand, Bryce’s _face_ when he thought she was calling him a third wheel. Bryce is the sweetest guy Ash knows—like, she loves Chaz, okay, Chaz is _great_ , but Bryce Marcus, once he lets you past his douchebag exoskeleton, is just this earnest, sweet, adorable gay marshmallow of a guy, and Ash has never met anyone who needed a protective older sister more—and she wants to fight everyone who’s making his life difficult, okay?

And like, she  _ knows _ he did some of it to himself: she was pretty wary herself when Chaz first started hanging out with him, to be honest, because all she knew was the media narrative, and frankly the media narrative was based on some actual bad shit. But whatever that shit was, it’s not who Bryce  _ is _ as a person. She’s not saying it was okay: she knows it was extremely not okay. But she also knows that  _ Bryce _ knows it wasn’t okay, and the more she’s gotten to know him, the more of his past shitty behaviour she suspects was just like … a scared kid using maladaptive coping mechanisms to survive in an environment of toxic masculinity.

_ He could’ve quit hockey, if it was that bad _ , she reminds herself.  _ He was a white boy with a supportive family and a comfortable financial situation. He had choices! _

And that’s true, obviously. Like, any queer guy—or any straight guy!—who doesn’t like how hockey culture is fucking up his life can deal with the problem by quitting. But  _ why should they have to? _ Ash may not understand the appeal of putting on knife shoes and crashing into a dozen other huge guys on a sheet of ice (and yes, she  _ does _ realize that’s a massive oversimplification, and that there’s skill and finesse involved as well as concussion risk, thank you, Grace), but Bryce  _ loves _ it. Jared loves it. Chaz and Raf, who are not raging homophobes, love it. Those guys out east—Riley and Lapointe—they love it. And they’re all good at it, and why the  _ fuck _ isn’t that enough?

“I don’t know,” says Grace, long-suffering. “How many beers have you had, Ash?”

“One,” Ashley says. “I’m not drunk, I’m just super pissed off.”

“Fair,” says Grace. They clink their beer bottles together. 

*

**Bae ❤️**

Babe can I call you real quick

I’m in a study group, whats up?

I can go be somewhere else

Can you pls?

Really need to talk to u

Ok give me 5 min I will call u

**Grace D.**

Jesus fuck, Grace

???

Just talked to Chaz

Jared’s in the hospital in Toronto

Chaz just dropped off Bryce at the airport in NYC

WHAT

Chaz was out after curfew OBVIOUSLY 

and they are giving him shit for it?????

Like FUCK THAT

FUCK RIGHT OFF WITH THAT SHIT

Jfc 🤬🤬🤬

The fuck is wrong with that team

Wait what happened to jared tho?????

Skate to the wrist apparently

Omg ash

Chaz says not to watch the NHL highlights

Not that I normally would but like

That is BAD

That is VERY FUCKING BAD

Yeah no shit

Listen to this tho

THEY DID NOT TELL BRYCE

Bryce only knows about this bc Julius called Chaz

The F U C K

You cant make this shit up

Flames didnt get him a plane ticket

They didnt pay for the lyft

All they fucking did was yell at chaz for missing curfew

Jfc

Raf does not know how lucky he is to NOT be playing for them???

How do we get Chaz and Bryce and Jared traded to the Caps

Asking for a me

Is Chaz ok?

Are YOU ok?

Idk honestly

Having some trouble focusing on this stupid study group

U stil on campus?

Yeah

Library tower 10th fl

Want me to come rescue u

FUCK YEAH

Ok im at the oval 

see you in like 15

🙏🙏🙏

*

“Hey,” says Chaz, fake-casual, one hand fake-absently playing with the ends of Ash’s hair.

“Hey,” she says. It’s evening, they’re sitting on the couch after dinner, Chaz has been scrolling who knows what on his phone while Ash works on a sociology term paper. Normal Monday, basically, except that they had not only Bryce but also sad injured Jared here all afternoon.

“Have you, um,” Chaz says. “Would you. What would you think about like, getting married?”

Ashley sits up, closes her laptop, and wiggles around so they’re facing each other.

“Chaz Anthony Rossi,” she says, “is that your idea of a proposal?”

Chaz’s eyes get very big. “ _ No _ ,” he says. “That was me asking if you’d ever be interested in getting married, like, in general.”

“To you, though.”

“I mean, yeah? Like, ideally?” Chaz is normally pretty confident, and it’s both adorable and kind of terrifying how tentative he sounds right now.

“So, uh,” says Ashley, who has definitely thought about it. “I don’t think I’m ready for that yet? Like, you’re all set for a career, but I’m still in school. But in theory, yeah, I’m in favour.”

Chaz grins. “Awesome,” he says. “Me too.”

The sociology term paper ends up not getting finished, but that’s okay—it’s not due for another week.

**Author's Note:**

> Warthog (from Big Rock Brewery) and Toolshed Red Rage are both types of craft beer brewed in Alberta. Don't ask me if they're good or not: like Jared Matheson, I hate beer and have given myself permission to stop trying to like it.
> 
> A Canadian pizza has bacon, pepperoni, and mushrooms on it (in addition to tomato sauce and mozzarella). I don't eat meat (and especially pork) so I have never eaten one, but it is popular among people who do. Honestly I mostly chose it because it's the kind Jared stole from Bryce very early in IJ(AOE) and ate just to spite him, even though he hates mushrooms.
> 
> Library Tower (the 12-storey part of the MacKimmie Library building) and the Oval (the Olympic Oval, originally built as a speed-skating venue for the 1988 Winter Olympics) are buildings on the University of Calgary Campus. [Note: canon states that Ashley is a student at the University of Alberta, but since she lives in Calgary and goes to in-person classes, I'm not sure how that would work? There are other postsecondary institutions in Calgary, but the biggest and best known, and closest equivalent to U of A, is the U of C, so I have made her and Grace students there.]
> 
> When I wrote Down But Not Out, I was a bit worried that I had been too hard on Flames and Oilers management. Then the first few post-wedding instalments of IJ(AOE) were posted and I was like, WHOA MY EXPECTATIONS WERE LOW BUT NOT LOW ENOUGH APPARENTLY. So there you go.


End file.
